New Music Interview: Glaciers

April 15, 2016

Glaciers are an alt-rock/ post-shoegaze band that realeased their second single ‘The Walls’ on the 7th April. A long-term project that has evolved from different bands, their sound is both established and somewhat familiar.

We catch up with them to discuss the rest of their plans for 2016 before they head to the southern coast for a string of shows.

‘The Walls’ contains elements of a number of different genres. Described as ‘post-shoegaze’, it comes across far more melodical than a lot of other bands trying their hand at doing similar things. Did your sound come about organically?

Well it depends what your definition of organic is really. We’re essentially an old fashioned garage band in the sense that the majority of our songs are written by just jamming together. Someone might come in with a riff or idea or just come up with something on the spot… Then someone else will add something to it, and then something on top of that and it gradually builds into a song with layers and structure. We don’t really think too much about it we just kind of do it. We certainly don’t go in with any expectations or plan it and say ‘today were going to do this kind of song mixed with this’. That’s not really what we’re about.

Considering this is your second release, your tracks sound developed and established. Were any of you making music together before Glaciers came about?

Me, Ben (bass/keys) & Billy (Drums) have been playing music together for 5 years now in various different bands and situations so we definitely have somewhat of a history together. Ryan (Guitar) on the other hand we only starting jamming with when Glaciers came about, but we’ve known and respected him for years from other bands he’s been in and Billy actually went to school with him so there’s still a background there.

Having such a comprehensive sound invites a lot of speculation around your key influences, most notably from brit-rockers Wolf Alice. We could also look back way further to bands such as Nirvana and Radiohead. Who would you cite as your biggest inspirations?

For me personally i’d say Radiohead, Everything Everything, Daughter and Tame Impala, at least at the moment. A few of us have been really into the Mars Volta the past few years and the bands surrounding them. Warpaint and Pink Floyd also come to mind, but then those are the more obvious ‘guitar bands’. We all listen to a lot of music you probably wouldn’t expect and even though we don’t necessarily sound like those artists we still take inspiration from them. There’s been a lot of pop and electronic influences too… Artists like Lorde, Chvrches, Grimes, The Weekend, Jack Garratt, Imogen Heap and then stuff like Aphex Twin, Venetian Snares and The Flashbulb. We just fit it all into a context we understand musically and we hope to diversify as we develop and learn more.

You seem to be able to jump between reserved and intimate and uplifting and explosive with relative ease, which certainly helps you carve out a name for yourselves being a new band. Who have you enjoyed playing with so far?

Well we’ve only played one show so far as Glaciers and that was with Wild Front, who are definitely worth looking up because they’re incredible at what they do. Over the years of performing in different bands though we’ve collectively been lucky enough to play alongside the likes of The Wytches, Kagoule, Planes (Steve Forrest of Placebo), Fatherson, The History of Apple Pie & The Cribs to name a few. On 5th May we’re supporting NGOD at 60 million postcards in Bournemouth and we’re really looking forward to that.

What are your plans for the rest of 2016?

Just to keep writing and hopefully play some good shows. We’re releasing a song a month for the rest of the year as we’re too impatient to wait around to put stuff out and were writing so much that trying to get a tracklist together for anything is impossible because there will always be something new that could fit in better than what we already had. This way we can keep putting out what we know is our best material and not have to sit on it for months.